UWE Wikipedia event

On 14 June 2016, the University of the West of England, Bristol is hosting a day event around Wikipedia and Wikimedia. It will include hands-on training with Wikipedia-editing and an overview of how Wikipedia and its sister projects are making knowledge and culture freely and openly available. No prior knowledge of wikis or Wikipedia is assumed.

In a nutshell

• When: 10am to 3pm, Tuesday 14 June. Lunch is not provided but there is a café in the building.
• Where: Room 3S705, S Block (on the left of this map), UWE Bristol Frenchay Campus, Bristol. Nearest train station: Bristol Parkway
• What: A free interactive workshop

Contacts

• Institutional contact: Dr Vivien Rolfe vivien.rolfeuwe.ac.uk
• Trainer: Dr Martin Poulter, Wikimedia UK volunteer m.l.poulterbris.ac.uk

Programme

• Wikimedia overview: how we're making digital media, text, data and educational materials free and open for the world
• Under the bonnet of Wikipedia: the quality scale and other tools to explore how Wikipedia articles evolve
• Wikipedia as a peer community (including how to make sure your changes to Wikipedia are accepted, plus advice for expert contributors)
• Hands-on editing using the new, simpler interface (There's a guide to the new visual editor in Wikipedia's help pages)

In addition to Wikipedia editing using the Visual Editor, we looked at

• Histropedia interactive timelines based on Wikipedia and Wikidata (try entering a phrase that is a Category on Wikipedia, e.g. Age of Enlightenment)
• Educational assignments on Wikipedia: Brochure | Course tool (look at past courses) | Education noticeboard (here you can request permission to create course pages)
• Wikimaps Warper (click an image, scroll down to the "View the georeferenced map in the Wikimaps Warper" button, click it, then select "Preview" to get the cool cross-fade effect)
• Wikidata Reasonator (tool for exploring what Wikidata knows about a topic, including timelines, family trees etc. Many millions of topics)
• Wikisource (hundreds of thousands of out-of-copyright texts, including laws, biographies, poems, novels...)

Also mentioned but we didn't get around to

• Map visualisations with Wikidata (and other kinds of query are shown on that page)

Accounts

New accounts

• w:User:Geographer100
• w:User:Olihaslam
• w:User:Glynjamyn

Other accounts

• w:User:John bristol had been inactive for seven years; just five edits prior to that
• w:User:Vivrolfe
• One other trainee had to leave early and her computer was very slow so I think she only just created her account before leaving

Evaluation

Six trainees in total; three women, three men. All attendees filled in evaluation forms.

1= Not satisfying/ useful. 5= Very satisfying/useful.

The workshop in general

5 5 5 5 5 5 Mean: 5.0

Content

5 5 5 5 5 5 Mean: 5.0

Trainers

5 5 5 5 5 5 Mean: 5.0

Materials available

5 4 5 5 5 4 Mean: 4.7

Your confidence to edit Wikipedia

5 4 5 5 5 4 Mean: 4.7

Your understanding of Wikipedia

5 4 5 5 5 5 Mean: 4.8

Comments

• I personally needed this 5 hours - I've left several shorter workshops confused. This has been superb.

How likely are you to continue editing?

5 5 5 5 4 [one blank] Mean: 4.8

Comments

• Yes- much more confident now. I needed to see a demonstration.

Please write three words/expressions which describe this workshop for you

• Useful, inspiring, rewarding
• Inspirational, friendly, clear
• Confidence-building, full of possibilities, supportive
• Empowering, illuminating, inspirational
• Informative, interactive, useful
• Useful/ relevant, interesting, pedagogically inspiring

Tell us at least one thing that would have improved this workshop for you

• I can't think how!
• [rest blank]

Further comments - anything positive or negative that you would like to share!

• Very enlightening. Great, thank you!
• Thanks
• This was excellent. Very informative + engaging.
• Martin was fabulous and most generous in coming to help us.
• [rest blank]